


Growing Pains

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Gen, alternate title: wirt grows up, teeny gravity falls crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 01:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4647360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You hit the water with a crash and everything goes white until it goes dark, and then you are walking through a forest with your kid half-brother next to you chattering about frog names and you don’t remember where you are anymore or how you got here and you need to get home. </p>
<p>(Or: this is Wirt, from start to finish)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> I'M BACK

You’re six when Mom and Dad get divorced. You don’t like think about it that much, from what you vaguely recall there had been a lot of yelling and some screaming and a couple of slammed doors and you had stayed upstairs in your room playing with your trains and pretending not to hear, because it didn’t help to go down and confront them.

 

“It’s grownup talk, Wirt, honey.”

 

You think you remember crying when Dad left. You haven’t seen him much since. Whatever. It’s fine. After that it’s just you and Mom, and that’s fine too, she’s sad sometimes but you’re busy with second and third grade and she’s happy that you’re around and that you’re doing okay. You’re kind of a quiet kid. You read a lot of books, you like the worlds written in pages better than the world you live in.

You’re eight when Mom remarries. Your new stepdad seems nice. He makes Mom happy, at least. You don’t know him that well, and Mom says that you don’t have to call him dad if you don’t want to. You end up calling him Stepdad, or his name, mostly. You’ve already got a dad, even if he’s not around that much anymore. He calls on the weekends though.

You’re still eight when Greg is born, and you remember wondering why you’re so much older than him, when everyone else at school has siblings maybe two years, three years younger. He’s so small. Mom hands him to you with a tired smile. Your stepdad beams.

“You’re a big brother now, aren’t you, kiddo.”

Rhe-to-ri-cal question. You answer it anyways.

“Mmhmm.”

“Here, support his neck.”

You look at the blue-wrapped bundle in your arms. Greg smiles at you and yawns.

You stick your tongue out at him.

 

Greg is a pain in the butt. As soon as he can crawl he’s following you everywhere, tugging on your pants and babbling cheerfully at you, toddling after you and falling down, and it only gets worse as he gets older. He doesn’t cry much, at least. But everyone keeps telling you that you’ve got to look after him, that he’s your responsibility, and sometimes you’re just busy reading a book or practicing clarinet or whatever, and then he’s there wanting you to go frog-hunting, or bug searching, or pirate playing with him. He’s like a small, talkative shadow, and sometimes you’d just like to be left alone.

You never asked for a brother.

 

When you’re fifteen you are in like-like with Sarah, you have a vendetta against Jason Funderberker, and you almost kill Greg.

 

Here is what you learn from the Unknown. Titles have power. Hope is important. What is lost can always be found.

And drowning is just like falling asleep except for all the ways it’s not.

Later, this is how you will remember the night.

You hit the water with a crash and everything goes white until it goes dark, and then you are walking through a forest with your kid half-brother next to you chattering about frog names and you don’t remember where you are anymore or how you got here and you need to get home.

It must be Greg’s fault.

 

There’s something wrong about this forest but you can’t quite place your finger on it. The trees seem to whisper. Seem to be angled a little bit wrong. Sometimes you can swear you see a face. The forest feels like a half-remembered dream, achingly familiar, unsettlingly comforting. You shouldn’t feel at home here. Mist rolls. Keep it together, Wirt.

Greg doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.

(Secretly, you’re glad he doesn’t notice. It’s easier to ignore when someone else ignores it with you.)

Things get better when Beatrice joins the two of you. She’s told you that she’d take you to Adelaide’s house, that Adelaide can get you home. Home. Where is home?

Home is a house in the suburbs with Mom and Step-Dad and your Dad calling every once in a while to check up on “how you’re doing, kiddo?” and home is your room and your clarinet and school and homework and Greg bothering you every couple of hours to go frog hunting or something.

 

Well, in that sense, nothing’s changed.

 

And it hits a little too close to home when the inn-folk call you Young Lover and that’s when another slot slides neatly into your chest. Oh. Sara. You had a cassette tape to give her, didn’t you.

The second title they give you, the Pilgrim, that fits better. Traveler on a sacred journey, lost traveler looking for a way back home. That feels right. Wanderer. Soul-searcher.  

 

Days pass. You walk. You go from house to house, patch of forest to patch of forest, village to inn to riverside. It’s monotonous except when it isn’t, animal schoolyards and inns and pretty girls who turn into monsters. Beatrice and Greg and his frog flying-walking-jumping beside you.

How long have you been here?

It could have been days. It could have been months. Years. Centuries.

Home feels so far behind. A wispy memory that you can but barely grasp.

 

And that’s when everything goes directly to shit.

 

Your soul hits rock bottom and you know achingly perfectly just exactly how you went wrong. You were so scared of everything, you didn’t want to confront the world, but you, you were supposed to be a protector, you’re Greg’s older brother and that has a responsibility in the title. You were supposed to take care of him, not get him killed.

So you confront the Beast, you and the Woodsman.

You pick your brother up. You pick Frog Jason Funderberker up. You say goodbye to Beatrice, and everything goes dark until it goes white. The world is wet and murky and your brother is beneath you. You grab your brother. You grab Frog Jason Funderberker. You head towards the shimmering surface of the lake, kicking desperately, two dead weights in your arms.

 

You collapse on the bank, flashlight blinding you. It’s so cold.

Someone calling your name.

Someone calling your name?

“Wirt, you okay? Can you see me, Wirt?”

Blink. Blink. Breathe in. Look up. Sara?

“Where am I?”

“Hospital.”

“Hospital?”

Blink again. Brain gears start to turn. Hospital. River. Unknown. Greg. Greg.

“Greg, where’s Greg?”

Say the words with panic in your breath, eyes wide, sit up and look around wildly. Oh God please God let him be alright after all we’ve been through oh God let your little brother be fine-

 

“And then-Wirt! I was telling them all about the time we all got-”

Frog Jason Funderberker croaks. Greg laughs. He’s wearing blue pajamas and is surrounded by your classmates who look on him with equal amounts of indulgence and confusion. He’s smiling, swinging Frog Jason around. You smile back, relieved. He’s alright. You’re alright.

 

Sara asks you about the cassette tape.

 

You stutter, but you’re not the same guy who went into the graveyard, you’re not the same guy who fell into the water with his brother. It feels like it’s been months since you’ve been gone, not just a few minutes. You’ve faced demons and witches and you’ve faced the Beast.

You can handle asking Sara over, and you do, with a firm voice that trails out into a confused mess. But she smiles at you, and you smile back.

 

That moment is perfect.

 

Life after Halloween feels scrubbed out, faded and shaded grey. Nothing feels real anymore, nothing feels important.

You go to class the Monday after Halloween, and it is like you haven’t been there in an entire age. The metal lockers, the linoleum hallways and cinderblock walls, the desks attached to chairs. Everything seems so strange. You stare at the teeming masses of humanity, feeling detached and otherworldly. You want your cloak.

“Wirt? Are you alright?”

Sara looks at you with concern. You blink. Scrub your eyes.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

 

A month later you go back to the cemetery. This time you’re wearing winter clothes, a hat, gloves, a red scarf. It’s still weird to be going around without the heavy, comforting weight of your cape. It’s December now. You pick your way through the tombstones carefully. You climb over the wall. Watch the train chug it’s way along, watch the river. Greg finds you a couple of hours later, and you go with him back home.

Life passes. You don’t return to the cemetery, not ever again. You don’t think you could bear to.

 

January, February, March, April, May, June.

You stay up late at a New Year’s party. You join the marching band, and your Step-Dad is proud. You go frog hunting with Greg for a friend for Frog Jason Funderberker. Sara kisses you beneath an oak tree behind the school. You write her poetry for Valentines Day. You visit your dad over spring break and talk about life and your future and what you’re going to do over the summer. You play pirates with Greg. Mom comments about how you and Greg are getting along better. You shrug, and say “Yeah, I guess we are,” and go searching for a girlfriend for Frog Jason Funderberker. You see bluebirds and think about Beatrice and wonder how she’s doing. The school year ends. You make out with Sara under the bleachers near the football field.

It’s with a jolt that you realize you’re happy.

 

Life passes.

 

You go on vacation to a weird little town over the summer with mom and your step-dad and Greg, and you meet twins who have a little bit of the mythic clinging to them. They recognize the wisps of the Unknown curling around you too, and you spend afternoons swapping stories. They’re younger than you and older than Greg and somehow the four of you click. You hadn’t known that there were others like you out there. They’re sad to see you go, they give you their phone numbers-both school year and summer time, and you wave goodbye as you leave.

You write Sara postcards because you’re a romantic sap. Greg teases you about it. You send them to her from Gravity Falls, from the Grand Canyon, from San Francisco.

You go back to school. You buy Sara flowers. You drink age appropriate drinks in the treehouse behind her yard and end the night with Jason Funderburker sobbing drunkenly into your shoulder as you recite terrible terrible poetry. You go to Greg’s music recital. You play your clarinet at football games, wearing flaking facepaint. You buy yourself a long navy-blue longcoat and take to wearing it everywhere. It’s weight is comforting, no matter how much your friends tease you. Greg gives you a grin when he sees you wear it, and you smile back. It’s a shared secret.

 

Greg talks about the Unknown every chance he gets. No one believes him, he’s seven, after all, but he doesn’t really care.

You back him up every single time.

  


**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of disjointed, to be honest, and I wrote it maybe a year ago, but I polished up the rough draft and here ya go. I used to write a lot of otgw fic and I got hit by a nostalgia trip a couple of days ago, haha. 
> 
> find me on anonymousAlchemist.tumblr.com!


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